My SO thinks everything is CGI

Watch the credits of a Marvel movie and notice the hundreds of names listed as digital artists, vfx artists, etc. Think about how long it takes to make the Avatar movies. That should give you an idea about how easy it is to do cgi.

Are we really having the “I’m trying to prove to my girlfriend that she is wrong” conversation?


Good luck dude.

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She basically thinks it’s “cheaper to just CGI someone jumping off a three story building in the water” than having a stunt man make the jump…

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Here's a great example of wildly unnecessary CGI.

Here is Peter and Tony talking on a building in NYC. Instead of just putting the actors there and pointing cameras at them, the entire thing is green screened...obviously.

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Oh...this is all CGI too. Yes, you obviously know Cap's not really holding a flying helicopter back...but did you know the whole thing is done in a parking lot in front of green screens with no city behind any of it?

Movie

Behind the Scenes

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Is there any videos or movies or anything that explains how difficult CGI is and how difficult it was to do before hand versus just having a guy do it?

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I don't know about a person jumping into water but there's a cool video of a guy remaking The Shining's blood elevator shot in CGI. Then comparing the two side by side.

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According to him that one shot done practically would cost between $50-$100k. CGI would only cost $14-$20k.

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She's more right than you are.

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We're quickly heading towards all CGI, I think.

Look at what ILM is doing... go watch some of the better episodes of The Bad Batch. That's all completely animated, but if the characters left their armor on, there are scenes that are photorealistic.



They deepfaked Luke's face in Mando and Boba Fett



Now, consider the obvious progression- you can deep-fake a face onto one of the animated characters.

You can have "Luke" dealing with a bunch of stormtroopers and droids, do a few random faces (the animators maybe, for a few bucks?) in the background scenes, and there ya go.
They're close. They can already do it, it's just a matter of streamlining and optimizing the process.

As for the guy falling into the water-
CGI means no liability risk for the stunt man, once you design the fall you can move cameras anywhere, with any amount of focus or zoom you want. You can quickly screen a lot of different views before doing a full render for the final shot.

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Just because it takes three hundred people to produce it, doesn’t make it better. And forget “better” , most of the CGI movies aren’t even good.

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To be fair, a lot of that is because the studios barely turn a profit anymore because movie executives change their minds a lot… and redoing a scene in CGI is way more expensive than reshooting most live action sequences.

It’s why Lucas had his own special effects studio. That made it much easier to make Star Wars the way he wanted.

She's right to an extent. Maybe not with a guy jumping into water, but most cinematic action scenes are 90% CGI. Pretty much every car chase you've watched in the past 20 years has been CGI. Recently they look better because instead of fully fabricated 3D CGI environments, they use drones to map an area of a city and add the filler and cars from there.

She's sharp. Everything IS CGI. We're living in a simulation.

What are your other questions at this station?

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I say some dude jumped and she said it was CGI

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I think you're right here.

Even though there's a ton of CGI, there are film makers that are rejecting it when they can. Case in point is Extraction 2 from Netflix. A huge portion of that was practical.

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Tell her that she's right and all the large penises in porn are CGI as well, that no one has such large ones. You'll thank me in the long run.

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brilliant